Lateral reachable workspace of axially symmetric mobile machining hexapod robots

Mobile machines allow for remote repair and maintenance within constrictive, hazardous, and inaccessible environments. Hexapod robots are a salient solution to mobile machines due to their maneuverability and controllable orientation. One important aspect of mobile machines is the reachable workspace of the currently loaded tooling. Generally, machining operations are restricted to planar motion operating within the lateral plane of the mobile machines. This paper introduces an analytical methodology for finding the lateral reachable workspace of an axially symmetric hexapod robots used as mobile machining systems. The closed-form solution to the lateral reachable workspace of axially symmetric hexapod robots is facilitated by the correlation of the lateral motion of a hexapod robot with an equivalent 2-RPR planar parallel mechanism. Since the solution is closed-form, it has high accuracy and reliability.